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Does China need to rethink its metrics- and citation-based research rewards policies?

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  • Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva

Abstract

The Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) of China has set forth ambitious goals, as part of its Citation Impact Upgrading Plan (CIUP), to fortify the standing of Chinese academics as well as Chinese academic journals. At present, MOST primarily considers Clarivate Analytics journal impact factor (JIF), which is a proprietary scientometric measure, as a measure of “quality”. Academic publishing is however, starting to move away from metrics such as the JIF that can be gamed, and that do not truly reflect the academic worth of individual scientists, or of journals. Metrics such as altmetrics, which show the paper’s popularity among social media, or a greater balance of metrics, to buffer the monopolized impact of the JIF on metrics-based rewards systems, may be issues that China and MOST need to consider as global academic publishing tends towards a state of open science where open access journals that reach a wider audience may have greater value than journals with a high JIF. Not only are China’s academics well-funded by the state, the Chinese academic market is a highly coveted market by publishers and other parties interested in advancing their academic or commercial interests. Given the current fluid and rapidly evolving state of academic publishing, and the fairly rigid JIF-based rewards system in place in China at the moment, coupled with a recent spate in academic misconduct from Chinese researchers, this letter offers some suggestions as to the need for China to rethink its policies regarding what factors influence academic rewards.

Suggested Citation

  • Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva, 2017. "Does China need to rethink its metrics- and citation-based research rewards policies?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 112(3), pages 1853-1857, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:scient:v:112:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s11192-017-2430-y
    DOI: 10.1007/s11192-017-2430-y
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Richard Van Noorden, 2016. "China by the numbers," Nature, Nature, vol. 534(7608), pages 452-453, June.
    2. Jaime A. Teixeira da Silva & Aamir Raoof Memon, 2017. "CiteScore: A cite for sore eyes, or a valuable, transparent metric?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 111(1), pages 553-556, April.
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    Cited by:

    1. Selcuk Besir Demir, 2018. "Pros and cons of the new financial support policy for Turkish researchers," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 116(3), pages 2053-2068, September.
    2. Fei Shu, 2017. "Comment to: Does China need to rethink its metrics- and citation-based research rewards policies?," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 113(2), pages 1229-1231, November.
    3. Zhenyue Zhao & Xuelian Pan & Weina Hua, 2021. "Comparative analysis of the research productivity, publication quality, and collaboration patterns of top ranked library and information science schools in China and the United States," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 126(2), pages 931-950, February.

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